Asia

What a globalised world I find myself in. My Hong Kongese friend plays music composed by Mozart, printed in America, with Japanese writing on the cover.

In other ways, of course, Hong Kong has a distinctly local flavour. Take the deposits I need to pay for my electricity, gas and water bills that are worth more than a year’s worth of bills. Or the near impossibility of finding a normal bow tie: one that is not made of plastic, in hideous colours, with weird pointy ends or without a covering of sequins or other little glittering plastic studs.

First was my trip to the market for Christmas presents. The Ladies’ Market is usually a dependable source of presents for nephews and nieces. Not so this time. There seemed to be more fake watches and handbags than ever, but no appealing simple clothes or gadgets for children. There was a surfeit of in the inappropriate (including an elephant trunk thong, which, as I momentarily paused in front of it waiting for the crowds to let me pass, a perfect stranger assured me would be much too small for me), but a dearth of the remotely appealing. In the end I walked out with just a pair of children’s slippers. Except that they weren’t slippers: the seller assured me they were something pronounced “shoe-shees”.

Disappointment number two came as I went to buy a little table I had seen the week before. And yet getting to the inconveniently located shop, I discovered that the table wasn’t at all as I had remembered it. It wasn’t nice or even practical at all. So I slunk away, my pennies still in my pocket, but still sans table.

Never mind. By then it was late and dinner overdue. Mulling over what to cook, I realised I was only a street or two from a little restaurant I frequented for their wonderful pork “clay pots” (simple, but tasty, bowls of rice and meat). Buoyed up, I went in, sat down and scanned down the menu card, ready to tick off my favourite dish.

But where was it? In fact, where was anything? I didn’t recognise a thing on the menu. I called the man over and asked if he had given me the wrong menu or if they had changed everything. Delightedly, he explained that, yes, it was a new menu and the restaurant often changed it. So I had no choice but to pick something ghastly and eat it grimly.

As I left, the owner, perhaps by now aware that this kind of change was not what I had been looking for, asked if my dinner had been OK. I cannot remember what I mumbled. But it definitely had not been OK.

At the nearby market dinner can be bought for pennies. And not only that. While the supermarket vegetables are lacking both taste and texture, the stuff in the market is really good. The freshest and most fiery of ginger. Onions, big and juicy. Bright broccoli. Big bulbs of garlic. Beans grabbed by the handful. Sweet oranges. And, oranges aside, all for pennies.

It is quite pleasant to browse the stalls and pick out lunch and dinner, and to cook a varied range again.

Though it be endless domesticity, for now it is an exhilarating change: a bright and raucous life that Hong Kong throws at me.

I finally have the kitchen sorted out and stocked enough to cook a simple dinner (the oven, of course, has still not actually been bought). An entirely uninspiring supper of pasta ensues, but somehow there is something very therapeutic about sitting alone at the dining room table to eat it.

Lunching in the Cosy Corner I noticed that the fake marble column had come loose and was being held in place with several rolls worth of sellotape.

It has been a bit of a week and I still haven’t fully recovered from dinner on Thursday evening. I tried out a new (only to me: it was a decrepit, local affair) restaurant and was astonished by just how delicious the food was. At the time of eating, I felt that it was perhaps the best food I had ever had in Hong Kong. Like as much it was drowning in monosodium glutamate (C5H8NO4Na).

Whether or not the scientific purist will allow me to blame the MSG, the fact is I slept not a wink on Thursday night. As a result, Friday probably wasn’t the best day ever, though the evening perked up over dinner with a banking friend in “a little French bistro” he knew. Loud conversation about the social implications of inclusive liberalism in the context of the nation state ensued (helped by the liberal inclusion of wine). It is just about possible that, by the time we left, the little French bistro was empty but for the participants of this important discussion and three tired waiters.

With great care I have been keeping the little stickers my local homestores gives me when I am reduced by necessity to buying something I well know I already have back in storage in England. Disappointingly, I discovered that my horde of stickers does not enable me to claim for free any of the useful items pictured in the accompanying leaflet. Instead, I am entitled only to an insubstantial discount on an impressively expensive item of no possible use.

I had to apply for my Hong Kong identity card this morning, a bureaucratic process par excellence: one has to visit three different people behind three different desks all in the same office but each with their own special waiting area. I had booked an appointment but, arriving early and asking where I should wait, I was sent to the head of the queue.

While waiting the girl sitting next to me brightly asked if I am English and told me how much she enjoys meeting new people. Alas, it soon turns out that she is a Mormon missionary and we spend the next half hour with her pretending that she isn’t trying to convert me and my pretending that I haven’t even noticed.

Later, arriving a few minutes early for a meeting, I pop into a neighbouring bank. Opening a bank account is becoming something of a priority if I am to avoid near-term embarrassment. Alas, banks out here have varied reputations, and the few high street banks that I have had recommended have cheerfully turned me away for being too poor. Today’s discussion got past that stage, but I was disconcerted by the woman’s reaction when I answered her question regarding my nationality. On telling her I was British she shook her head and said that would cause a problem. They would need to do additional risk checks on me given possible sanctions against my country. Had I missed some headlines, I wondered. I gently reminded her that this was a British bank. She smiled.

Feeling that, after all this, it was time to start cooking, I went to buy a frying pan after work. The process (though successful) convinced me to have a last supper at a little Japanese restaurant I had been to once before. I remember it being tasty food, if a little slow.

I ordered the simplest things on the menu thinking they would be quick. It turned out, they were so simple the kitchen completely forgot to cook them. After waiting forty minutes for my salad, I decided to cut my losses and leave. On explaining this to the waiters it seemed for a moment as if they had not only forgotten my order but also forgotten me.

Suitably chastened I entered a couple of supermarkets on the way home and stood in front of the fresh meat and vegetables. It was enough to make me feel I might have to try a few more last restaurant suppers before I cook again.

Hong Kong is not just an island of bars and banks and a Kowloon side of chaotic bustle. There is the great outdoors as well.

Hiking is a popular activity, and the New Territories have some fantastic scenery to walk through. Having done little to escape the grind of settling in and making house, I felt that a walk amongst greenery was becoming an imperative.

A friend suggested a simple three hour walk: stage one of the Maclehose Trail. And simple it was. I did the six mile, three hour walk, in two hours and ten minutes. Alas,on reaching the end it proved impossible to get a taxi back out of the national park.

There was no alternative. I turned around and walked the six miles back. This time in an hour and a half.

It was with almost schoolboy delight that I bought my first bottle of Gin in Hong Kong. Who, really, could resist? To not only find it on the shelves after prohibition Riyadh, but that it should be so very much cheaper than in England. So I indulged and bought a bottle.

But friends, too, knew of Riyadh’s attitude towards Gin, and perhaps also felt that the price out here wasn’t too bad. And so, as two friends visited over the weekend, suddenly I went from no bottles to three.